Fully Human Experience
If we are willing to admit it, most of us are afraid of death, or dying, or the process of getting there. Much of this fear is an innate survival mechanism and serves us well every day. Without it, crossing the road would be a dangerous proposition.
While this fear supports us in many ways it also limits the sense of our presence, and our transience, on Earth. Because many of us live in deep denial of the limitations of our bodies, we often disavow opportunities to grieve our losses, and to acknowledge our fear.s Hidden deep within, this turning away may create its own fetters, enclosing us in ever-shrinking boundaries.
By this refusal we cut ourselves off from one of the richest human experiences, the experience shared by all who came before us and all who will come after us. Opening our hearts to our remarkable biological processes holds the possibility of profound realisation.
A recent article about Tracy Emin, the ever-outspoken, ever-controversial artist, touched me deeply as I read about her cancer surgery and the changes in her life since. Her biology has been totally re-organised and her world turned literally inside out. That experience re-ignited her art, her generosity, her outrageous self, her loving self.
What can we find, as part of our elderhood path, in our continually changing bodies? Is there deepening to be discovered in a mindful exploration of our state of our physical being at any moment? What attributes of our selfhood lie in the sometimes difficult or painful, constantly remarkable, process of growing older?
Unnoticed riches lie in the willingness to grieve the losses over the decades of life, to fully mourn what has ended. Unaccepted changes in our health, can hold us captive to the past and sometimes make stepping forward nearly impossible. Surrender into the present truth of our ageing bodies and minds opens a door to freedom and unites us with all humankind, and some of more-than-humankind as well.
Contemplating and accepting dying, death and grieving provides fertile ground for expanding and deepening, growing and emerging—fully experiencing—our precious elder selves.